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Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Sam's Take: Metal Gear Survive Shows Konami Beyond Saving

Back in May last year, Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa announced that, apart from Pro Evolution Soccer, Konami would now be shifting their focus towards mobile gaming. It was another bump in the long road of decline that Konami would be travelling down, with Hideo Kojima leaving the company in December after Konami was booed at last year's Game Awards, a damning report by Japanese newspaper The Nikkei listing the draconian working conditions at Konami, the cancellation of Silent Hills, and the subsequent anger by Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus all piling on the company.

The announcement of Metal Gear Survive is pretty much the final nail in the previously prestigious publisher's coffin, as it shows that all Konami cares about now is money. Why do you think that they announced a switch to mobile gaming? Because mobile gaming is where the money is: all of Konami's mobile games are F2P with microtransactions, the biggest moneymaker of all mobile game types.

Little did they realise that, if they simply kept Silent Hills in production, they'd probably be making far more money than they are now. With the release of P.T, Konami and Kojima had captured the eyes of the world, but with the cancellation and subsequent meltdown, they instead got all of the hate. I get that Konami want to make money, but surely they realised that, if they just developed and released good games and, y'know, didn't piss off and lose possibly one of the greatest game developers of all time, then they'd make far more money from that than from awful mobile games? Surely Konami aren't that stupid!

So with Konami's newfound focus on pachinko machines, mobile games, and 4-player co-op survival-em-ups that will end up being undeniably average, sooner or later they will become obsolete. And we'll all yearn for the days when Konami were ambitious and cared about making good games - then quickly forget, because Kojima just released Death Stranding for Sony.